Elena Ivanovna Popova is a grieving widow – perhaps grieving a little too hard. Grigory Stepanovitch Smirnov is an army officer looking to call in a debt from her dead husband. But will this unlikely couple find more than they bargained for?
Elena Ivanovna Popova – Sonia Backers
Grigory Stepanovitch Smirnov – Nick Calderbank
Luka – Damian Corcoran
You can’t go wrong with Chekhov, right? Not only is his work so structurally beautiful that one of the most important concepts in writing named after him, but hewas a master wordsmith, so perfect for radio, right?
I found a translation on the internet that wouldn’t be affected by copyright issues and learned as much as I could about the play (the title is more commonly translated as “The Bear” but I love the word boor so much that I kept it – plus I think it is a better title.) It is funny, it has great turnabouts, marvellously over the top central characters, and a slightly thankless role for the manservant Luka – thank you so much Damian for bringing him to life!
The funny thing is, if I’d been to see a production of The Boor/The Bear I probably would have changed my mind. When I’m directing I try to avoid watching other peoples versions of a play because, well, I don’t want to just reproduce whatever others have done with it (no matter how good – I mean, if you’re working with a classic author, your audience will want to see something new).
Some time after we published the play I sat down and watched a staged version on YouTube. And that’s when it hit me. Unlike Outside, which I wrote as a visual play but thanks to Chris worked much better as an audio-drama, The Boor is a stage play that works best if you can see the characters. Elena and Grigory are so melodramatically over-the-top that getting the actors in front of an audience allows them to play this up, to make the sort of grand gestures and comedic touches that bring heightened emotion to life.
There’s a useful lesson here. Radio works better for intimacy, subtlety, (wait, I’m bad at both of those things), and feeling close to the characters. Melodrama belongs on the stage. I’m not saying you can’t do it the other way round, but it is certainly worth keeping in mind. I like our version of The Boor; the cast do such a great job bringing out Chekov’s comedy chops and make their characters likeable despite (or perhaps because of) their absurd emotional acrobatics. But I can’t help but wish I’d taken Sonia, Nick, and Damian and put it on stage – because they would have knocked it out of the park.
